Potted film reviews by Gary Anthony Cross

Ju On: The Grudge 2 (2003)

I personally find it bizarre how every single half-baked horror film that gets released seems to warrant a sequel these days; I honestly don’t know why a lot of these movies exist.

Ju-on is actually one of the few that deserved a sequel; whether or not it was a good idea to make it is open to debate though. I personally consider the original Ju-on one of the best straight horror films I’ve seen, but the sequel seems to have fallen into the usual horror sequel trap. Instead of expanding on the idea, the director seems to have thought “well we did all the build up in the original, so let’s jump straight in with the scary stuff!”. Unfortunately without the build up there is no tension, and so instead of being scary the spooky happenings seem faintly ridiculous; the opening section in particular makes the ghostly boy seem like some kind of albino gremlin. Add some rather gimmicky nonsense including hairy nooses and a mobile wig and it’s very difficult to take seriously. It does improve towards the end and the final half hour does contain some genuinely creepy moments, but it seems to be content to rip off Ringu rather than carrying on the tradition of the original movie.